4. Isn’t Ritual Bad?

Ritual has gotten a bad rap over the years, along with the word “religion”.  They have been accused of being a false spirituality, a fake which real spirituality replaces.  But the fact is, the very people who yell loudest against religion and ritual are deeply entrenched in these practices.

Religion is seeking the Divine.  Anyone who connects with God at some point pursues him*, if only to pray and to give the Spirit one’s intention.  Some who deny religion deny the Divine, but they still seek Truth with the same passion that others pursue God.  Religion is simply a part of us.

Ritual is a meaningful act that we repeat.  We sing the same songs that are important to us, we read the same stories to all of our children, we have the same worn arguments on Facebook.  And these acts make our lives meaningful, we know who we are because we have done them.  Everyone enacts ritual.

So what’s the big deal?  Because some people have claimed more for ritual and religion than they actually can do. 

Some claim that ritual is sufficient to connect to the Spirit.  That isn’t true.  Ritual is a door for our inner life to change, to become something different.   But if all we do is spin a prayer wheel without our inner life being transformed by the act, then the ritual is meaningless.  Empty actions do not change us.  But acts with intention make transformation possible.

Some have claimed that ritual purifies us.  This is not true.  We are purged from guilt or uncleanness by our transformation from evil to good.  But a ritual can lead us to being contrite or repentant, which will purify us.  Ritual is positive if it leads us to an inner transformation. If it just leads to complacency, then it is a negative force in our lives. 

A ritual is like a smile.  A smile communicates happiness.  However, an unhappy person can smile, which makes others think they are happy.  People can get angry at the smile, because it feels like a lie.  However, studies have shown that a smile can often create happiness.  The act often changes the inner position.  Yes, the inner life is shown in our bodies.  But our bodies can also help create the inner life.  It isn’t a one way street.

Even so, ritual can help create an inner life which is what draws the Spirit.  Ritual is nothing without a transformed inner life, but it is an essential tool for achieving it.  So the Spiritual Life is a life of ritual, or discipline, leading to a transformed inner life. 

*The Divine is neither male nor female, or, more likely, both male and female are drawn out of the wholeness that is the Spirit. I use the masculine pronoun for the Spirit as a convenience.  However, there is a really good discussion about how all of humanity is the feminine to the Spirit’s masculine by C.S. Lewis.  Still, I’m just trying to express something without getting tripped up over grammar.  If you feel more comfortable, replace my masculine pronouns with feminine ones.  I’m not using “it”.   For grammatical reasons I am not capitalizing pronouns referring to the Divine, even though I capitalize Spirit and other words I use to represent him.  When you have a Divine who became human, by some who recognize the Divine and others who don’t it gets tricky.  In reality, I just don’t want to have to remember to capitalize every “His” or “Himself” or “Herself.”  It just gets silly.  I’m pretty sure the Divine doesn’t mind that the text isn’t so filled with capital “h”s anyway.

3. What is a Spiritual Life?

As human beings, we all struggle with three moral realms.  These three moral standards occupy portions of our lives, of our thinking, of our actions, of our opinions.   And they all take up permanent residence, resisting any change.

The first moral realm is karma, or justice.  This is the sense that everyone gets what they deserve, and that everyone should get what they deserve.  We work for pay, the good is praised, the criminal goes to jail.  What we do has a direct correlation to what we receive.  We know that life doesn’t always work out this way, but in some sense we think that it should always be this way.

The second moral realm is mercy.  This is the necessary putting aside of karma, to give what isn’t deserved.  Whether children are good or bad, we give them presents at Christmas.  We do nice things for our family, whether they deserve them or not.  We see someone in trouble, and we give them help, even if they can do nothing for us.

Most spiritualities claim that the realm of mercy is superior to that of karma.

But there is a third moral realm which is older than either karma or mercy—the moral realm of Ritual.  Ritual is based on the idea that you are, and you become, what you do.  We learn to cook and we make a lot of mistakes at first, we might even burn some pans to oblivion.  As we keep at it, though, especially under guidance of an experience cook, we get better and then we become a cook.  We didn’t become a cook because we were naturally talented at it, but because we kept at it until people wanted to eat our food.

The Spiritual life is the regular practice of seeking the Spirit, a set of rituals we use to meet the Divine.  At first, our spiritual practice is like a toddler taking her first steps—wobbly and without much hope for the future.  But as we persist, the spiritual life becomes easier and we become a spiritual person.   Not by ignoring the other two moralities, but by having all three moral realms—karma, mercy and ritual be woven together into our lives, giving us a spiritual whole. 

2. Choose Your Own Spirituality

What most people don’t understand is that spirituality is a relationship with the Divine, and like any relationship, it is unique to the two people who are involved in the relationship.  Couples do things together that they would not do separately.   And different couples do different activities to connect to each other.  Each relationship is completely unique, which is part of what makes the relationship significant. 

Your spiritual life, your connection to the Divine, will be unique to you.  You will determine the time, the activities, the place, and the goals.  No one else can tell you how to live your spiritual life.   Well, no one should tell you.  Just because something works for one person, or for millions of people, it doesn’t mean that it will work for you.

In this volume, I will be taking a mostly Christian perspective, with some clues from other spiritual paths.  I am taking this approach, because it is what I know, what I have lived out.  Perhaps that seems limited to you.  But Christian spirituality has been around for 2000 years, and billions of people have taken a Christian approach to connecting to the Spirit realm.  This means that there are billions of different paths, billions of ways to connect to the Spirit. At least. 

This volume is only going to take a handful of the ways to connect to the Divine and give some basic explanations, as well as give some principles that work for most people.  What you do with the tiny insights you might find here is up to you.  Because ultimately, you have to relate to the Divine in your way.  It’s your relationship.  

1. Touching the Unseen

There is a realm we cannot see, but we can sense.  Many talk about it in mystical terms, but we cannot reach out and touch it. Not exactly. Some seem to connect with it so naturally, but for others it is a terrible struggle. Some spend hours in joyful meditation or prayer, but others have a difficulty seeing or sensing anything beyond what is absolutely tangible.

We all know that there is an intangible world.  We are made up of elements and atoms, and beyond our solar system is a realm of beauty and order that few have actually seen.  But we know the tools to reach those worlds—microscopes, telescopes, labs and observatories.  Yet even more people have claimed to have an intimate touch with the Divine, with beings that almost none have seen with their eyes, heard with their ears.  They derive peace and meaning from this connection.  But how does one actually accomplish this?

This blog isn’t going to give a definitive answer.  Rather, it is going to give many answers, many potential paths to live a life connected to the spirit world.  It is up to you to discover what you want out of it, and the path that is right for you.